


Very Adorable Darlings

by geasp



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Historical, Nursing, Trench Warfare, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28649772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geasp/pseuds/geasp
Summary: In February 1916, Red Cross VAD nurse Patience Mount finds herself at a British field hospital in Northern France.
Relationships: Delia Busby/Patsy Mount
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Very Adorable Darlings

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: VAD = Voluntary Aid Detachment.
> 
> I’m hoping this story will be fairly representative of the time in which it is set; however I’ve taken one or two creative liberties with history and 1WW Red Cross rulebooks.

Chapter one

Mr Buckle said he would be five minutes, but Trixie was certain it had been much longer than that. 

The station clock above her was unable to clarify one way or the other because the hands had frozen, who knew when, just before a quarter to seven.

Trixie stood on tiptoe, the better to scan the herds of khaki congregated on the platform. There were so many people, it was impossible to distinguish where the orderly had gone. As soon as Mr Buckle had stepped away from them, he had blurred into the mass of people, becoming one more uniform amongst so many others. 

If Trixie had thought it would have been easier to spot where Patsy had disappeared to, she had been mistaken. She squinted against the crowd, searching for a flash of Patsy’s dark blue overcoat in a desert of dusty khaki, but she had vanished, too. Trixie knew it had been a terrible idea to let Patsy go off and search for Mr Buckle, but there had been no stopping her. Before Trixie could say no, Patsy had marched off, interrupting a line of stretcher bearers on the way. 

Trixie’s feet were too cold to hold their position for long and she rolled back onto her heels with a sigh that showed white against the February air.  
“I’m sure they won’t be much longer,” said a quiet voice by Trixie’s elbow that was almost drowned out by the noise around them. 

A group of orderlies pushing sack trucks laden with wooden crates passed by, the unknown contents inside each container rattling metallically. Trixie avoided eye contact; the poor excuses for moustaches on each man’s face irritated her somehow. She glanced up at the network of iron beams supporting the station roof and felt the keen eyes of the passing orderlies rake all over her, and it made her want to pull her shoulders up to her ears. She closed her eyes for a moment before offering a half-smile down at the pale face looking up at her. 

Oh, Barbara. A luggage trunk was not an appropriate place for a young lady to sit, especially given the number of men around. “We need to get you into the warm,” Trixie said, giving her friend’s shoulder a quick squeeze. 

It felt like a lifetime since they had set off for Waterloo Station. London had been fast asleep when Trixie had stepped outside the lodging house on Bow Road with Barbara and Patsy. She had pulled her overcoat collar up against the cold and Superintendent Atkinson had scolded her, telling her it was not becoming for volunteers to wear a collar in such a fashion and that she would not have it. Suitably admonished, Trixie had turned her collar back down. She was so glad to be free from the superintendent’s beady eye and that nasal, whining voice that so often seemed to find fault. The girls at Tredegar House said that working overseas was better because all the fusty old relics preferred to stay in England and quibble over packets of bandages. 

Now, months after her application had been submitted, weeks after the acceptance letter had come through, and hours after she had stood waiting at the end of Bow Road with a cold neck, Trixie was finally on French soil. It had been a while since the boat had docked, and yet she had not heard a single word spoken in anything other than English. If the station signs had not been there to tell her otherwise, Trixie would have thought herself not in Le Havre at all, but still in England. 

*

The hospital train seemed to go on as far as Patsy could see, its chimney occasionally wheezing out puffs of dark smoke in the distance. Men and women wearing Red Cross brassards were at work inside the carriages; some were turning over bed bunks and throwing used linen into trollies, others were busy with brooms and cloths. All the windows and doors had been thrown wide open, and a stale, sleepy smell seeped out onto the platform. 

Patsy jostled along the platform in search of Mr Buckle, one hand holding her hat against her head as she twisted her way past countless clusters of men that seemingly had nothing else to do but stand and smoke as they waited for the next step of their journey. She caught fragments of conversations: the crude punchlines and the raspy laughter; she heard the muted jangle of coins in pockets and the chesty cough irritated by the cold and the thick, ribbony clouds of blue smoke that hung stagnant above their heads. 

Her progress was slow and awkward. The presence of a VAD nurse was a treat to tired soldiers on an otherwise dull Tuesday afternoon. Most of the men here would be going back to England today; all of them carried permanent mementos of their time in France. Some sported visible reminders of their experience: a sling, a grimy piece of gauze, a jagged line of stitches. Other aches and pains, exterior or otherwise, were hidden behind a stoical smile or a hazy, far off look in the eye. 

Patsy set her body firm and her face stern, determined not to betray any hesitation as she pushed her away through the mass of bodies, dodging the glowing tips of their cigarettes and their coarse attempts at conversation. 

“Watch it!” an orderly cautioned, holding a hand up that suddenly stopped Patsy in her tracks. The apology caught in her throat when he passed in front of her, a man with bandages for eyes clinging on to his arm.

Where the crowd began to thin out, she finally found Mr Buckle sharing a cigarette and a joke with a small parade of men that looked too young to be soldiers. One or two sat in wheelchairs, red woolen blankets covering their legs. A man stood next to Mr Buckle had a wooden crutch under each arm and nothing where his left foot should have been.

“Miss Mount, what are you doing here?” Mr Buckle asked when he noticed her. He stubbed out his smoke on the floor and straightened up. “I was just on my way back. I’ve found a couple of lads to help with your luggage.” Mr Buckle gave a nod toward two gangly young specimens beside him wearing tunics that were a size too large for their frames.  
“I hope Miss Gilbert is feeling better now, she looked ever so peaky earlier,” he continued.

Barbara’s seasickness had been the talk of the crossing. The channel had been calm for February, with only the occasional mist patch to contend with. In spite of the favourable conditions, Barbara had had to lean over the port side of the vessel, ashen faced and sweaty mere minutes after the little supply ship had left Newhaven. Trixie had caught Barbara’s cap just before it fell off her head, saving it from a watery end.

“I think she is a little better now,” Patsy replied, blinking away the urge to look at the man with the missing foot. From the look of him, he probably was not much older than Margaret.

“Good to hear it,” Mr Buckle said. “We’ll get her on the train and find her a nice cup of tea, that’ll see her right,”

*

The rhythmic thud and roll of the carriage had an almost hypnotic quality. Exhausted by the crossing, Barbara had begun to doze in her seat, her head lolling towards Trixie’s left shoulder. 

Trixie sat in perfect posture by the window, looking through the bundle of identity papers that were neatly folded inside her pocketbook. She had the documents a thousand times since they had come through, signed and stamped, from Devonshire House. The compulsion to check and recheck each line clawed at her, as though she could not trust that the letter was real. For weeks, she had half expected to hear that it had all been a mistake, that really, she had failed the exam and would be destined to changing bedsheets and sweeping floors forevermore. 

Patsy sat across from her companions, her back facing the front of the train. The compartment smelled like her mother’s gardening gloves, like leather and soil and rain. Her hands rested in her lap and her middle finger mindlessly circled the tip of her thumb as she stared out of the window, looking at, but not seeing, frosty, barren fields passing by. There was something about the smudgy grey sky that reminded Patsy of Sunday afternoons. Every now and again the sun broke through a gap in the clouds, a watery blaze of light making her eyes narrow. 

She found her mind drifting back to Oxford and the look on Laura’s face when she told her she was going abroad. 

Perhaps she would write to her once she was settled in at Rouen. She had not made up her mind yet.


End file.
